Top Ten Cybernetic Upgrades Everyone Will Want

Science fiction, computer games, anime… cyborgs
are
everywhere.
Transhumanists are philosophers who believe that one day, cybernetic
upgrades will be so powerful, elegant, and inexpensive that everyone
will want them. This report lists ten major upgrades that I think will
be
adopted by 2050.

The List

10. Disease Immunity

Between 20 and 40 years into the future, we will become capable of
building
artificial antibodies that outperform their natural
equivalents. Instead of using chemical signaling that relies on
diffusion to reach its target, these antibodies will communicate with
rapid acoustic pulses. Instead of proteins, they will be made using
much more durable polymers or even diamond. These antibodies will move
through the bloodstream more quickly than other cells in the body,
and will take up less space and resources, meaning that there will be
room for many more.

Using super-biological methods for
identifying and
neutralizing foreign viruses and bacteria, these tiny robots will still
function in harmony with our own bodies. They will probably be powered
either by glucose, ATP (like natural antibodies), or acoustically.
There are already bloodborne microbots today which are not rejected by
the immune system  these are the precursors of tomorrow’s
nanorobotics. Through their presence and continued operation, they will
eliminate all susceptibility to disease in those who have them running
through their veins. This will not make people immortal, but it will
allow them to walk into a room contaminated with a flesh-eating virus
in nothing but a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. For more on artificial
antibodies and other body-integrated nanites, see
Nanomedicine.

9. Telemicroscopic, Full-Spectrum Vision

There are
microscopes that weigh one tenth of an ounce. Some birds of
prey have vision
so sharp that
they can spot a hare a mile away. We
have compact devices that can scan the electromagnetic spectrum from
x-rays to radio waves, and everything in between. Our eyes in their
current form can do none of these things. But in time, they will be
upgraded. There are already
prosthetic
retinas that can provide
low-resolution artificial vision for blind people.

It’s
simply a
matter of time until better prosthetic eyes are created, and their
sharpness, contrast, and resolution is superior to what evolution gave
us. The biggest challenge may end up not actually being about building
a superior artificial eye, but remodeling the visual cortex so that it
can process the info and relay it to the rest of the brain in such a
way that it’s not overwhelmed.

8. Telepathy/Brain-Computer Interfacing

Ever wanted to send someone a message with nothing but your mind, or
have a neural implant that gives your brain direct access to Google?
Hundreds of corporate and academic labs across the world are working on
projects that generate progress in this area. Check out the
Berlin
Brain-Computer Interface, which lets you move the cursor around on
a
screen with only your EEG waves and 20 minutes of
training.

Miniature
fMRI will allow us to continue increasing the bandwidth between
brain
and computer, eventually allowing for a “mental typewriter” that
converts thoughts into text. A tiny transmitter could send this to a
bone-conduction device on the receiving person, letting them hear
the
message without sound. NASA is also working on
a device to transcribe
silent, “subvocal” speech. Like many transhumanist upgrades, these
will probably start as efforts to help people who are handicapped, then
evolve into powerful tools that can be used by anyone bold enough to
adopt them.

7. Super-Strength

Early in 2006, scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas, led by
Dr. Ray H. Baughman, developed
artificial muscles 100 times stronger
than our own, powered by alcohol and hydrogen.
Leonid Taranenko, the
former Soviet weightlifter, holds the world record for power lifting a
266 kg (586 lbs) dumbbell. If Leo’s natural muscles were replaced with
Dr. Baughman’s synthetic polymer muscles, he could lift 26,600 kg, or
about 30 tons. That’s equivalent to this
yacht, the Nova
Spirit.

Super-strength is an interesting area in that
the
technology to
do it has already been invented  the only step
remaining
is
actually
weaving the fiber into a human body  which, today, would be
complicated and messy, not to mention probably illegal.

However, that
doesn’t mean that it won’t be done, probably within the next couple
decades. Further improvements to the process could make it safe for
normal people, numerous ethics questions notwithstanding. One benefit
of improved muscles is that we’d be far less vulnerable to unfortunate
accidents. They could also provide armor against bullets or other forms
of attack. One downside is that people could use them to bully others
around. Guess the good guys will need even bigger
muscles.

6. Improved Appearance

In general, there is a lot of agreement as to who is attractive and who
is less so. Numerous experiments have shown that while there are slight
subjective differences in who we want to get with, we are biologically
programmed to look for certain facial and physical features that
correlate with increased fitness.

For the time being,
this is
unavoidable. The only way to change it would be to reach inside our
neural circuitry and start severing connections. Until we choose to do
that, we can improve our own lives  and the lives of those who
have to
look at us  by looking as pretty or handsome as possible. We
brush our
teeth, keep fit, take showers, and all that other great stuff that
helps us score.

Some of us even visit the plastic
surgeon, with mixed
results. Surveys
show that certain procedures, like liposuction, have
very high patient satisfaction rates. As the safety and precision of
our body modification technologies improves, we’ll be able to change
our faces and bodies with minimal fuss, and maximal
benefit.

Everyone
will be able to be stunningly attractive. And the really great thing?
We’ll always be able to enjoy it. If everyone becomes attractive, we
won’t regard the slightly less attractive of the lot as “ugly”
 our
brain doesn’t work that way. An attractive person is attractive,
whether or not others are around. A planet full of attractive people
could do a lot to improve our quality of life.

5. Psychokinesis

In the real world, psychokinesis is a bunch of wishful thinking and
pseudoscience. Despite the
roughly 30% of people who think that
it’s
possible to affect objects through the mind alone, history and evidence
make it clear that this is total nonsense. There are no psychics and
there never have been. However, that doesn’t mean that we can’t
create technopsychics artificially.

By 2030, we’ll be
cranking out
utility fog  swarms of tiny machines that fly through the air
and
interlock with robotic arms. By combining brain-computer interfaces,
like the type used by
Claudia Mitchell to move her prosthetic arm, with
utility fog, we will have direct-thought connections with powerful
external robotics, allowing non-fictional psychokinesis. Utility fog,
once all the necessary software for it is developed, will be capable of
cooperating to perform practically any physical task or simulate a wide
range of materials.

Because utility fog could be
distributed at low
density and still accomplish a lot, a room filled with utility fog
would look empty, and people in it could move and breathe normally.
They would only notice once the fog is activated  either by a
central
computer, or a neural interface. Once a connection is achieved,
practically anything could be accomplished with the proper programming.
Throwing objects through the air, hovering over the ground, cracking an
egg from across the room, materializing orbs of energy  all the
antics
we’ve always wanted to perform, but never had the means
to.

4. Autopoiesis/Allopoiesis

Autopoiesis is Greek for self-creation. Allopoiesis is other-creation.
Our body engages in both all the time  we start as a fetus that
creates itself until it becomes an adult, then, essentially stops. Our
body produces things external to itself, but usually involving an
extended process of cooperation with thousands of other human beings
and the entire economy.

In the future, there will be
cybernetic
upgrades that allow for personal autopoietic and allopoietic
manufacturing, probably based on
molecular nanotechnology. Using
whatever raw material is available, complex construction routines, and
internal nanomanufacturing units, we’ll be able to literally breathe
life into dirt. If our arms or legs get blown off, we’ll be able to
use manufacturing modules in other parts of our body to regenerate
them. Instead of building robots in a factory, we’ll build them
ourselves. The possibilities are quite expansive, but this would
require technology more sophisticated than anything discussed thus far
in this list.

3. Flight

Human flight, outside of an airplane… this was
recently achieved by
former military pilot Yves Rossy, who flew 7,750 ft above the Alps in
his 10 ft wide, self-designed aerofoil. You can see a video of it
here.
The airfoil weighs only 110 lbs and cost just under $300,000.

Over the
next few decades, the weight will come down, the strength and
flexibility will go up, and eventually it will be difficult to
distinguish between people in aerofoils and people that can just fly
whenever they want.

Using high strength-to-weight
materials like
fullerenes, we will fly using wings that weigh only a fraction of
our
own weight and fold into our clothing or body when not in use. Rossy
achieved speeds of 115 mph, but with superior materials and greater
tolerance for acceleration and wind, our cybernetic flight speeds are
more likely to top 500 mph. To take off from the ground, we’ll simply
use our super-muscles to jump to the highest object around and begin
our flight from there. With personal flight, commercial airliners will
become obsolete. The only problem left will be dodging each other.

2. Superintelligence

When we think of superintelligence, we tend to think of the ways it is
portrayed in fiction  the character able to multiply 6 fifty
digit
numbers in his head, learn ten languages in a month, repeat the
catch phrase “That’s not logical”, and other tired cliches. True
superintelligence would be something radically different 
a
person
able to see the obvious solution that the entire human race missed,
conceive of and implement advanced plans or concepts that the greatest
geniuses would never think of, understand and rewrite its own cognitive
processes on the most fundamental level, and so on.

A
cybernetic
superintelligence would not just be another genius human, it would be
something entirely superhuman  something that could completely
change
the world overnight. For the same reason that we can’t write a book
with a character smarter than ourselves, we can’t imagine the thoughts
or actions of a true superintelligence, because they’d be beyond us.
Whether it is developed through
uploading,
neuroengineering, or
artificial intelligence, remains to be
seen.

1. Immortality

The ultimate upgrade would be physical immortality. Everything else
pales by comparison. Today, there are already
entire movements based
around the idea. Realizing the possibility of immortality requires
seeing a human being as a physical system  composed of working
parts
that cooperate to make up the whole, some of which have the tendency to
get old and break down.

Cambridge biogerontologist
Aubrey de Grey has
identified seven causes of aging, which are believed to be
comprehensive, because its been decades since a degenerative process
has occurred in the body with an unknown cause. Defeating aging, then,
would simply require addressing these one by one. They are: cell
depletion, supernumerary cells, chromosomal mutations, mitochondrial
mutations, cellular junk, extracellular junk, and protein cross-links.
A
few pioneering researchers are looking towards solutions, but accepting
the possibility requires looking at aging as a disease and not as a
necessary component of life.

Well then, that just about wraps up our list. See
you
in 2050, alright?